Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

It will limp back to base one sector at a time. To avoid this, if you have them, equip your ships with a solor panel and solor sail. That or go for Quantum reactors.

What I do is send a ship that has nothing but cargo compenants out to meet the ship with no supplies. I fleet them together and then return them too base.

After that, I alway establish infastructure first and for most. A base in every system. Resuply is the key to success.

But in a pinch, trade em to the AI for something. The AI loves depleted ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ June 04, 2002, 12:47: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

I saw suggest somewhere"
Build a fast Colony Ship.
Colonize as close to the ships in question
Build a Resupply Depot
If the planet is in an Allys system
Gift or trade the planet to them after you have "humanly" rescued your crews.

The original idea was to send the colony ship out behind the long range exploration ships so it would be in position when needed.

In some cases you might be able to get a Military alyiance

[ June 04, 2002, 12:59: Message edited by: The High Gryphin ]

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

Geo, the abandon ship order has some merit I think.

You are right that it would be a cheese tactic to be able to reboard the ships at will, but you could make it so that derelict ships have zero supply and a random number of (randomly determined) damaged components.

The abandon ship order could go in the Retrofit/Modify/Scrap order window. The damage-algorithm could be the same one as for damaging warp points.

You could maybe even add a mineral cost to reclaiming derelict ships. This would make it unattractive to abandon ships that you wanted to later reclaim, and give the abandoned ships a real "derelict" feel.

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Obviously, there needs to be a distinction between 'abandoned' and 'mothballed'. 'Mothballed' means 'preserved' after all. Can a desperate crew forced to abandon a ship possibly take the necessary measures to 'preserve' their ship? By definition, no. Simply, a ship that has been abandoned will break down and disintegrate. Just have it lose a certain number of components every turn after it has been abandoned. When the components run out, poof! I'd say at least 2 components per turn wouldbe good.

[ June 05, 2002, 19:45: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

I like the idea Baron, but I don't think a ship abandoned in the vacuum of space would fall apart that fast. Perhaps 2 components a year, but not 2 a month.

There is a realistic difference between abandoning a ship and mothballing it, but perhaps there doesn't need to be a game play distinction. It would save some coding I would think if the same function were reused. You could say...
</font>

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Any ship can be mothballed regardless of whether it's at a space yard or not.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mothballed ships can be only be unmothballed if they are in a sector with a space yard.</font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mothballed ships take gradual damage, unless they are in a sector with a space yard.
  </font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think if this is done though, two things should be changed as well. Well one for sure and the other maybe.
For sure mothballed ships should not give a system view as they do now. They should be like mines in that respect instead of like sats. This way the ship isn't really a derelict, it still belongs to the empire that mothballed it, but it could be easily snuck up on and taken by another emnpire with boarding ships.

The other thing that maybe should happen is the ability to booby trap mothballed ships. Say the SDD would still work, even though it's mothnballed. But that might not be fair, so I am not sure about that. I would like that idea better if SDD's werent' a hundred percent effective, but that's another argument. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

Excellent! Yes, I agree it would be cool if mothballed ships were seizable. Defense should be zero. If you can get next to it & board it's yours. But when reactivated it would have zero supplies, of course. No combat tricks of seizing mothballed ships & using them immediately!

Automatic decay if they don't have a space yard nearby to maintain them is also good. Ok, I'll compromise on one component (randomly chosen) per turn as the decay rate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif The vast majority of mothballed ships will be in a spaceyard sector anyway.

Now the question is: How do we get MM to do this along with all the other things we're requesting? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually that would be worse. You could mothball a fleet, then unmothball it in a single turn with a single space yard ship. [edit: oops, I just realized what a dumb criticism that was, since you can already do that!]

The suggestion to have damage accumulate over time is a good one but might be hard to implement. Much easier would be to destroy all components but leave the hull there. (Is that possible? Maybe need to leave one component, bridge or MC, for example.) This would allow someone to come along and salvage the wreck, but they would need a repair ship and supplies. I wonder if you could mothball it, too? Then someone would have to unmothball it AND repair it. But you probably can't unmothball someone else's ship.

Easiest thing to do is just make it go away. Maybe the Trade Federation takes it as their rescue fee?

[ June 05, 2002, 20:27: Message edited by: dmm ]

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

Since we are brainstorming:

How about allowing anybody to BUY the abandoned ship from the Trade Federation? (No, they are not in SEIV; I just invented them.) Perhaps they will even provide you with repairs, supplies, and a crew (for the right price). Or maybe the TF gets all technology from abandoned ships and can sell that to any and all who can pay their exhorbitant rates?

So, abandoning an outdated scout ship would be no big deal, but you wouldn't want to abandon something good, like a colonizer. UNLESS, maybe you had just stolen it from your arch-enemy and you wanted to let all of his neighbors get his colonization tech. (This differs from gifting or trading because you wouldn't need to have diplomatic contact with any of them.)

Interestingly, you might also want to abandon a captured ship if it had a bunch of levels of a tech that you didn't have any of. (Example: captured ship has Shield IV and you don't have shields at all.) You could then buy all of the levels from the TF, but it would cost you a lot and it would make them available to everyone else for that same price. But then maybe you could recoup some of your cost by trading the info to allies.

And how about this? Maybe you could also bribe the TF each turn to keep the tech secret?

Well, all this would require major recoding, but I can dream.

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

Well, if we're talking about a minimum of coding changes to the program, then insert a flag, like

WAS_MOTHBALLED_AT_SPACE_YARD {1/0}

If this is set to 1, then the ship was 'mothballed'. If set to 0, it was 'abandoned' (but the status is the same otherwise). Then don't change the ship until someone comes along and tries to board it. When they do, pick a random number of components and damage them. This could represent the fact that sometimes ships could float for millenia in the cold, preserving vacuum of space, but other times a freak meteor shower etc could damage them severely.

The point is, you don't need to track this, but rather leave the ship intact until someone comes and actually looks inside; the Schroedinger's Ship paradox http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Hey, I just had an idea for a modification to this. If the SDD is still functioning when the ship is boarded, it could detonate. This could represent the crew abandoning the ship, but leaving it 'booby-trapped'.

Hmm, but why would you abandon it if you had a functioning SDD? Isn't that how this thread started. Well, I'm confused http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: An extremely silly question, buut...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I do like that, but the only thing is it doesn't allow for an abandoned ship to completely disintegrate over time, unless it disolves to dust when you try to board it. That would be frustrating. "I know there was a ship here somewhere..." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">ROFL! Good point! I am an idiot for not thinking of that. I suppose the only reason would be that you want to take the chance on recovering it later at least partially intact. Or it could be just meanness. But a minfield would be more efficent. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif